Ant & Grasshoppie

I want to tell you a story,
About the ant and the grasshoppie,
One is sensible, the other is crazy,
One is rajin, the other is lazy,
All summer long the ant is busy,
Building its nest, collecting nuts and a daisy,
While play is the only thing does the 'hoppie;
Summer come, summer go,
Autumn fall, winter follow;
The first snow flake falls,
The ant gathers its last nut and daisy,
Its store full, its nest cozy,
While the hoppie goes hungry;
Knock, knock! Ant! Open the door!
Sorry! Opportunity knocked but is no more!
The poor hoppie keels over and is no more,
That is the end of the story
Of the busy ant and the lazy hoppie.
Oh, one more thing, the ant now,
Has more food in the freezer -
The dead hoppie -
To be eaten next summer!

My house an igloo

I have a pen, my pen is blue,
I have a friend, my friend is you;

I have a house, my house is an igloo,
I have a blouse, my blouse is new;

I have a shirt, my shirt is yellow,
I have a skirt, my skirt is mellow;


... to be continued

Stark the world,
Over which creatures,
High and low,
Stand sentinel,
Play-acting
To be little gods.

At ground level
A cockerel
Stands sentinel,
Ever alert
In the struggle
For survival.

Parody D'amour, Take This Verse To My Reader

The same scene on a different day ...

Under an overcast sky ...

Instead of piped music, cig smoke provides the accompaniment ...

Planted Townies

The men sit under the burning sun,
Whence all but them have fled to the bower,
Day in, day out, right on the hour, past the tower,
Right there in Dungun town
By the Pejabat Pos clover;
Their skins darkened like fishermen,
In the heat wave, smoke lingers
From their fingers,
The filtered tips of their cigs,
Wetted by their black lips;
This is the scene I see every day
Since two months I moved
Into Dungun town.

Malay checkers they play,
Every day by the day,
On their faces not a worry,
The only pictures gory
On their cig packets surely;
Their pockets must be in pay,
For they work not a day,
And yet can sit in the sun
And all day play.

Say Father!
When are you going to take them out?
As the statistics indicate,
And the Health Minister shouts?
Or am I going first,
Worrying to death,
About my health,
Jogging the beach,
Cycling the road,
Picking through the eateries
Vainly trying to clear up
My cholesterol clogged arteries,
Calm down my beating heart,
And tamp down my rising pulse?

O Father!
Life is so perverse!
I who cross my t's and dot my i's
When it comes to eat,
Jog, sleep - and no cig,
I who traverse fields and ford rivers,
Living the style of a scouter,
Am getting the bejesus out of life,
While these planted townies
Are setting an opposite example
And seeming to get away with it!

Spider and Fly

Spider and fly,
One is a sinner,
The other is dinner,
That is the reason why
Things have never been keener.

Photographic Verse: An Epiphyte

Hang on there, epiphyte!
Or are you a saprophyte?
I don't know how long
You've been, and will be, there,
Appearing out of nowhere,
Now sticking out like a lantern of light,
Against the darkness of the night;
Staking out a claim to existence,
However temporal and insignificant,
Your only claim to fame being spotted,
Photographed and here immortalized:
Would you have mattered,
Rising up out of decaying matter,
Had it been otherwise?
Then again, I'm no different,
What I've just said of you by inference,
Is also true of me and all en passant -
We come, stand up and move on.

Photography: Children

Balanced composition: dark background, light foreground; subjects centered, looking natural and on the trot ... Nina is leading the charge of the light brigade ... circa 1998.

Anna Mastura: Charge Of The Light Foodage

Sticks and stones may break bones,
But for Anna, six,
A fork and a spoon is the fix,
To separate fish flesh from bone;
By cheek in jowl,
Soup in bowl,
She attacks the food in her plate:
Elbow to the left,
Elbow to the right,
Anna piles the rice and pries the fish,
Filling grains and fleshy fillet,
Fork to the fore, spoon an added boon,
In the swoop to the dish of health;
In goes a sliver of flesh and a mound of rice
Into the mouth and jaws of death.
A klink now, then a klunk,
As fork misses the chicken
And slides off the bone
Follows the spoon
On the heel of the fork
As metal scrapes the dock.

Photography: Elements of Composition

The use of back light coming from the window helps to give radiance while the look of openness gives an expression of innocence to the subject. The clutter in the foreground lends the picture an everyday scene.

The vertical format of the picture putting the subject in the top half and the food in the bottom half brings out a touch of contrast and irony between the bounty of the fare and the ailing look of the subject.

A simple composition in which the two subjects are separated with an intervening space made up of the darkened doorway. The cup of tea in the foreground adds a point of interest.

Nasim

This is Nasim, Ajai's little brother,

They come from the same mother,

But he comes from another father.

Nasim's father met his mother

Upon a chance and a whim.

The chance was the first meeting,

The whim was in the ensuing.

The first meeting was through Ajai's father,

The ensuing whim came from Ajai's mother.

Nasim came into the world with Ajai's father

Flicking the first tile to fall on the next tile

In a domino effect which brought forth the tike.

Shall I end the story now, or add a surprise:

It is nice to play god even if god is only a dice.

Zain Azrai Zaharan

Jai, Jai, his Papa's son,
Comes home at half past one,
In the rain or in the sun,
Straightaway asks for lunch,
Is it ready, is it done.

Jai, Jai, his Papa's son,
Look at the way he runs,
Over a clean pair of heels,
Knocking a pair of buns,
As he disappears into the hills,
That is how fast he runs.

A Land Hog and a Sea Cucumber

Who says a dog and a cat cannot be friends?
Who says a land hog cannot make it with a sea cucumber?
Who says a pedal bike on land
Cannot hitch with a paddle craft on water?
As the Malays say, a rind of tamarind from the tree,
And a pinch of salt from the sea,
End up in the cooking pot,
Or, as in the case of the folder
And the hardshell in the picture above,
In front of the rider's front porch.

Ah huh, ah huh, I like it ...

Body, Mind & Spirit

The body and mind, in mutual care,
Is full of spirit and spare;
Taken for granted or abused,
The spirit becomes canted and confused,
Leaving a vacuum state,
To be vied among a pack
Of impostors, pretenders and fakes:
- casting furtive glances at one's own shadow,
- cat chasing its own tail,
- grasping at straws,
- symbol-literate, significance-illiterate,
- chasing the shadow, overstepping the substance,
- seeing the mercedes, missing the diabetes,
- shallow waders, surface skimmers, depth-scared,
- barking at the wrong tree,
- failing to see the woods, or the trail, for the trees,
- stuffed on scandals, sporting navel-rings, shunning literacy,
- chasing the glitter, throwing the litter,
- muddying the rivers, cutting the trees,
- congesting the streets,
- adding to the clutter;
Of playing to pride, prejudice and ploy - in abundance,
Of harmonizing the body, mind and spirit - in abeyance;
Slowly, slowly weakens the body,
Slowly, slowly declines the mind,
Slowly, slowly shrivels the spirit ...

Then out of the lump,
Unfurls a clump,
Out of the kindling,
Fans a fire flaming,
Out of the detritus,
Grows a lotus,
Out of the matrix,
Rises a phoenix,
Out of the infernal,
Rises hope eternal -
Providing renewal -
A new trajectory
From its unfulfilled category
That was the human spirit,
Mind and body,
Back to its glory.

Late Pilate

I'm late, I'm late, says Late Pilate,
Koyak pisang makan kulit;
Late to bloom,
Late to blog,
Pilate comes lately -
Can't say yet,
But at the rate he's always late
He may even die late!
Now that is one slate
To elate late Pilate.

Al-Maari: Ronin, Rodin, Khayami

A ronin samurai out of kilter
goes in search of a new master
and found one, a Sufi
in the person of Al-Ma'ari
who is ronin, rodin and khayami.

A Woman, A Kayaker, In A Storm

When a storm brews up
In a woman's heart
She seeks an outlet and an entry;
When a paddler senses a storm,
He makes for the coast
Seeking an inlet
To point his kayak and enter.

Sara the Sixie, Bully to the Brontosaury

Sara, year six and a half,
Hold your back straight,
Keep your chin up,
Lock your eyes ahead,
Plant your feet square;
Mind your manners, maid,
Keep them fine and fair.

Of the mess you made,
No cause for fright,
Angels will clear in the night,
But you march off to bed at four,
And wake up past noon to
Make for the bathroom door!
Of the little crab I caught, if it is still alive,
A little brine water it don't deprive;
If it has died, give it a proper burial rite -
Here a stick green, here a petal bright.

Crabbie, can we turn off the tv now?
It is already past midnight -
But ...
Crabbie, can we turn the thingy off now?
It is already past three ...
But ...
Crabbie, last call, it's four!
About time you get it right, Papy!
Cries the bully
To the brontosaury -
Dimming the telly.

The Perfect Religion

God wound the perfect religion into orbit,
Humans then made pirate copies of it,
Even calling it, The Perfect Religion;
Hundreds of copies of the One
Have been made, each claiming
Theirs is the true religion, implying
Others are all homologated!
They may differ in details and deities,
But all essentially saying the same things;
Unbeknownst to one another,
Each and everyone staying within
The shell - coconut shell -
Of their faiths and not bothering,
Or allowed to step out and find out
What's cooking under the other
Shells dotted about on the barren
moonscape of faiths as surrogates
For certainty of knowledge;
Each jealously guarding their individual
Bubble of belief and if you
So much as peek out from under
Your own shell to ask or comment
On the smell coming from the pot
Of another shell, you'll be warned
In no uncertain terms not to interfere
In other people's shell matters!

Over the centuries the copied religions
accrue added beliefs, stories, history, myths
And legends to thicken the plot and
Add bricks to the wall of beliefs,
To become what a religion essentially is today -
A currency made valid by force of advocacy -
Like a coma patient dependent on apparatus:
Remove the props and he will be a different status;
The throne might as well be replaced by a chair
If everyone can be made to declare
The chair is the new symbol, like those
Emperor's new clothes,
Are a pretense to hide hypocrisy,
Or Solomon's dinner to euphemize cow patsy;
Just by giving it a set of vests
To engage humans in their fetish hex;
Just by giving it a set of liturgy,
In a language in which the clergy
Holds an advantage over the laity;
To catch humans at their most impressionable:
The more you understand, the more refutable,
The less you understand, the more inflexible;
Just by giving it a set of rituals
To catch humans in an ineffective gear -
Psychosomatic repetitive behavior.

In any plan grandeur to start
And sustain a conspiracy of beliefs,
A captive crowd is a basic ingredient
Providing the critical mass and lever
From initial resistance to deliver -
One converts, the bandwagon effect takes over,
This was what happened to Parameswara
In the Melakan clover.

Soon, the boundary between brick and belief blurs,
The brick is now the target of the kisser
And the wall the direction of prayer
To be pawed and wept over,
Each ritual act an entreaty for an
Easier entry into the ethereal pantry,
Rather like a student squirming in
An examination hall beseeching his
Subject teacher, the invigilator,
"Sir, tolong Sir!" for a tip or,
Better still, an outright answer!

Over time, if not right at the start,
The perfect religion is forgotten;
In pursuit of the copied religion,
The vestments, the liturgy, the rituals,
The historical experience,
Become an ignored-at-your-own-peril
Imperative all their own, God
Now an accessory after the act,
A footnote to the form and show of religion;
The means making a meal of the end,
The journey obscuring the destination,
The mercedes shoehorned into a collection,
Pasting piety in the skull cappy,
Making a religion out of religiosity.

And what, you may well ask, is the true perfect religion?
The answer, my fellow salikins, pilgrims and, yes,
Naysayers also, is blindingly simple -
An answer which the blind have seen
All along without even making
A song and dance of it,
As in the Blind Watchmaker
As in the footfalls of Al-Maari
Simply because they don't see
The visible copies;
An answer which the sighted
Cannot see because they
Are so hooked on the visible externals.

But before I tell you the answer, here is another story ... blah, blah,
Here is a bottle of my lintah oil ... blah, blah,
And here, and here ...
Alright, the answer:

Radiate the inner light beatific,
Patiently wait the final fix.

Hail the Human Body, Hale the Temple

Hail to thee, temple of the human body -
Like the ugly duckling to the swan,
Like a departure lounge waitress
To the globetrotting stewardess,
Like Cinderella, the Queen-to-be,
The human body is a made-to-wait,
Maid-in-waiting, made-to-order,
Abode of the gods, the true vessel,
playground, machine-shop and temple
Of the stepped, tiered soul's evolution plan -
Instinct, Self and Cosmos;
But pretenders, impostors,
And Petaling Street fakes
Abound - a bmw with low IQ,
- a range rover with manicure-n-coiffer,
- a mercedes raised from felled trees,
- a high-rise apartment
built on ill-gotten gains,
- a walled compound gained
from its feudal past;
a pile of mortar built on
the ruins of a previous pile
marked by a hallowed
halo made hollow
by its hard-to-swallow
Hollered out name -
these are the cow dung
euphemized as Solomon's dinner,
these are the Emperor's
new clothes to cover up
the bonkered-on-belief starkers.

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood is the title of a song first sung by Nina Simone, the American Civil Rights Movement singer, in 1964, and by many others since. I consider the versions sung by her, by the Animals and by Yusof Islam as the best three. The music and lyrics have a universal appeal and the potential to touch even the most hardened of hearts. Simone sang it in a slow tempo in her hard-to-categorize trademark style while the version by the Animals is outstanding for its opening and choral guitar riff setting off delectably the lead singer's deep voice. Sung by Yusof Islam with some lyrics changed slightly, the song takes on an added meaning in view of his conversion to Islam and his devotion to the religion. The lyrics:

Baby, do you understand me now
If sometimes you see I’m mad
Don't you know that no one alive can always be an angel?
When everything goes wrong you see some bad

Well I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

You know sometimes baby I’m so carefree
With a joy that’s hard to hide
Then sometimes it seems again that all I have is worry
And then you burn to see my other side

But I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

If I seem edgy
I want you to know
I never meant to take it out on you
Life has it’s problems
And I get more than my share
But that’s me one thing I never mean to do

Cos I love you
Oh baby
I’m just human
Don’t you know I have faults like anyone?

Sometimes I find myself alone regretting
Some little foolish thing
Some simple thing that I’ve done

I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood

I try so hard
So don’t let me be misunderstood